Initial Thoughts

Hopefully you’ve been following along with this month’s October Pairing series. If not check out the first few posts, they’re worth it!

For this pairing I’ve combined the second cigar in the box ,the Lil Drac, and Prichard’s Fine Rum. If you read the review of the Lil Drac, I was slightly disappointed with the first one I smoked. I had heard a lot of praise about it from fellow smokers on other blogs and in the forums, so I had high hopes. Needless to say I was let down with the first one. I’m hoping this second one has more to offer.

Hopefully you read the review on the Prichard’s fine rum. I’m a big fan, I’m not quite a rum connoisseur yet, but I’m getting there and this is a great place to start.

Typically, when I have a sweeter spirit, such as rum, I like to pair it with a spicier cigar. I like to see what the flavors do against each other and if the intensity of one can bring out something in the other. So this is going to be a little different than what I’m used to. I picked up a lot of sweetness on the Lil Drac, and very little spice. Hopefully, this isn’t a sweetness overload. So let’s hop into the pairing and see what we find out!

Combative Flavors

When I say combative flavors, I’m trying to pull out things that just didn’t work well together.

Smoking this Lil Drac I picked up a lot of the same flavors from the first time I smoked it. I picked up a lot of sweet cocoa and some more cinnamon. The cocoa paired nicely, but for me the cinnamon didn’t get along with the rum. It wasn’t overly combative, but that was the only real disagreement between this pairing.

To me cinnamon is always confusing, it’s typically sweet on the front end and then delivers some spice on the backend. This is really the only spice that I got from the whole cigar. Like I said it just didn’t jive very well with the rum. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I might have completely missed that battle though. So all in all, not that combative of a pairing.

Harmonious Flavors

Now this was the exciting part of the pairing. I love when two things go together really well. They can bring out different flavors in each other. Like I said above, there weren’t a lot of flavors butting heads. This pairing worked really well together.

I’m constantly trying new techniques with my pairings. This time around I tried swirling the glass to open up the rum, and then blowing smoke into it to try and infuse it a little. I realize that might sound stupid, (and I probably looked stupid doing it) but hey it’s worth trying. I did actually enjoy the by-product of this idea. It gave the rum a very smokey flavor to it.

The main flavor combination that I got out of this pairing was the new notes of honey. For whatever reason when these two combined, I pulled out a lot of honey flavors. In fact, it was a very smokey honey combination. It was very interesting, I sat there rubbing my tongue against the roof of my mouth trying to figure out exactly what the flavor was. I kept going back to honey.

I was really happy with how this pairing turned out. I feel like they worked very well together, in fact it made me reconsider my pairing ideas of strong spirits with sweet cigars and vice versa. I like the sweet and sweet, it worked well together. I won’t completely abandon my previous thoughts, but they are always up for reconsideration.

Conclusion

All in all a great pairing that I highly recommend. The rum didn’t overpower this cigar. The sweetness of each really worked  well together. I’d have to say neither was a bigger star in this movie, they both played off of each other really well. They allowed the other to display it’s own strengths and picked up where the other left of. A great back and forth effort. It’s what you want in a cigar and spirit pairing. I would definitely try this these two paired together again, it was a great combination.